KHARKIV, Ukraine — If you wonder why the United States should keep supporting Ukraine, let me describe my recent visit to Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city and long the cultural and academic capital of the country.
In May, Ukrainian soldiers drove the Russian military back from the city, which is only 25 miles from the Russian border. Yet the Russians still shell Kharkiv and its suburbs nightly (and sometimes by day) from across the border. They specifically target civilian infrastructure: hospitals, schools, universities, apartment towers, and municipal buildings, driving half the population of 1.5 million out of the city.
When I checked into my small hotel in the city center, the manager told me: “If you hear booms at night, just ignore them. But if the hotel shakes, go to the shelter.” This is the norm.
Kharkiv looks eyeless, every store and office building boarded up, at least on the lower stories. The broad center city boulevards are almost empty — except for the occasional trolley car — and pedestrians are scarce.
Yet the city, once known for its lovely parks and riverside walkway, its universities, museums, theaters, writers, and cafes full of students, refuses to die.
Vladimir Putin’s brutal effort to destroy Kharkiv is a warning to Europe and to America: The Russian dictator’s thirst for territorial conquest must be stopped — before it expands beyond Ukraine. Today is a hard day because we have seen Russian strikes on people who are going to work. They strike exactly when people are getting on and off the trains.
People who stay in Kharkiv are ferociously loyal to the city and determined to defend it. Strangers talk to each other as if they are part of a special society, and hugging frequently replaces handshakes.
Most locals are doing some kind of volunteer work, like packaging food and clothing for bombed-out residents or raising funds to help wounded soldiers. Although most businesses are closed, local merchants are already brainstorming on how to rehouse tens of thousands of citizens whose dwellings were destroyed by the Russians — if and when this conflict ends.
But those who must keep the city — and its education system — running have to face brutal new challenges daily.
“Today is a hard day because we have seen Russian strikes on people who are going to work,” I was told by the exhausted mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov. “They strike exactly when people are getting on and off the trains.”
We met in an Italian restaurant because all of the municipal buildings are damaged and this was one of the few eateries that remains open. Terekhov’s face was gray under gray hair and gray stubble. “Every morning I go to work to see what has been ruined,” he sighed.
On this particular morning, everyone was talking about the father whose 13-year-old son was killed by a strike just as they left their high-rise apartment building in the Saltivka suburb. Video had gone viral of the father refusing to let emergency workers take his son’s body as he prayed beside it for two hours, begging the boy to return.
The mayor was proud that city services were working, including trash collection and (now free) public transport. He had hoped the shelling would have stopped by now and businesses could reopen, providing jobs and desperately needed income for residents.
Putin had other ideas.
